Thursday, August 11, 2016

Pulling up the drawbridge: America and ‘authoritarian populism’

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Brexit. The growing
popularity of “authoritarian populist” parties across Europe. In a
lengthy piece, the Economist sums up the state of the (advanced economy) world this way:

From Warsaw to Washington, the political divide that
matters is less and less between left and right, and more and more
between open and closed. Debates between tax-cutting conservatives and
free-spending social democrats have not gone away. But issues that cross
traditional party lines have grown more potent. Welcome immigrants or
keep them out? Open up to foreign trade or protect domestic industries?
Embrace cultural change, or resist it?

This echoes a 2007 Tony Blair quote — one I’ve frequently referenced, most recently in my new The Week column — where he says the “modern choice” in politics is not right versus left but “open versus closed.”

Twenty20.

The Economist, quoting pollster YouGov, puts a different spin on it:

We are either “drawbridge up” or “drawbridge down”. Are
you someone who feels your life is being encroached upon by criminals,
gypsies, spongers, asylum-seekers, Brussels bureaucrats? Do you think
the bad things will all go away if we lock the doors? Or do you think
it’s a big beautiful world out there, full of good people, if only we
could all open our arms and embrace each other?

So what’s driving the drawbridge uppers, a group with momentum in
many nations these days? One obvious answer is economic stagnation and
dislocation. The Economist cites recent McKinsey Global Institute
research that finds “65-70% of households in rich countries saw their
real incomes from wages and capital decline or stagnate between 2005 and
2014, compared with less than 2%.” In the US, that number is 81%,
though it almost completely disappears if you count disposable income
(includes taxes and government transfers.)
Another possible culprit is demographic change and an associated
cultural panic of sorts, especially as a “country’s native born age and
their numbers shrink.”

Large-scale immigration has brought cultural change that
some natives welcome—ethnic food, vibrant city centres—but which others
find unsettling. … Last year
white Christians became a minority [in America] for the first time in
three centuries. By 2050 whites will no longer be a majority. The group
that has found these changes hardest—whites without a college
education—forms the core of Mr Trump’s support. White Americans, like
dominant groups everywhere, dislike constantly being told that they are
privileged. For laid-off steelworkers, it doesn’t feel that way. They do
not like being accused of racism if they object to affirmative action
or of “microaggressions” if they say “America is a land of opportunity”.
Another Pew poll found that 67% of American whites agreed that “too
many people are easily offended these days over language”. Among Trump
supporters it was 83%.

So cultural shock in an economic environment that may feel like
stagnation, even if things actually look somewhat better on paper. Now
growth is important. In The Week, I quote “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth“where
Harvard University economist Benjamin Friedman argues that economic
growth “more often than not fosters greater opportunity, tolerance of
diversity, social mobility, commitment to fairness, and dedication to
democracy.”
But there’s a bit of a paradox here. While growth has not been
gangbusters anywhere, authoritarian populism seems stronger in place
where growth has been a bit better, such as Poland, the UK, and the US.
Jacek Rostowski, Poland’s former finance minister and deputy prime
minister, offers a theory in the Financial Times:

So what is happening, if the present populism is not
correlated with unbearable misery, as it was in 1930s Europe? The
alternative to the social-democratic explanation is a conservative one:
populists are doing well in countries that are doing well, because
voters there do not believe that anything really bad can truly happen.
Why not “give the populists a chance” to fulfil their promises? After
all, maybe they can deliver.

So maybe in the US, growth has been good enough that voters are
willing to take a risk, but weak enough for long enough that they think
some level of political “creative destruction” necessary.
Finally, the Economist points out that regarding the cultural aspect
of the rise of the drawbridge uppers, time is on the side of the
drawbridge downers:

Young voters, who tend to be better educated than their
elders, have more open attitudes. A poll in Britain found that 73% of
voters aged 18-24 wanted to remain in the EU; only 40% of those over 65
did. Millennials nearly everywhere are more open than their parents on
everything from trade and immigration to personal and moral behaviour.
Bobby Duffy of Ipsos MORI, a pollster, predicts that their attitudes
will live on as they grow older. As young people flock to cities to find
jobs, they are growing up used to heterogeneity. If the Brexit vote
were held in ten years’ time the Remainers would easily win. And a
candidate like Mr Trump would struggle in, say, 2024.